An alleged Tibetan high lama who claimed to have transmigrated into the body of a Devonshire man, Rampa provided through his writings a legacy of secret knowledge that has challenged even his most strident critics. Part 1 of 2

In January 1981, two prominent Tibetan identities died in exile. Amala, or "Mother of the Nation", died after a long illness in Dharamsala, India. She had given birth to 16 children—including her most famous son: His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Her two other sons had been recognised as tulkus, or reincarnations of high lamas. She was beloved by the whole Tibetan nation in exile, who mourned her passing.

In an emergency ward of the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Canada, the famous author and mystic known as Tuesday Lobsang Rampa also breathed his last after decades of ill health. His 19 books about Tibet and the occult arts had sold in the millions and his admirers could be found on six continents. Despite his fame, however, there were no accolades or eulogies from the Tibetan community. He died unrecognised and unclaimed by the people of Tibet whom he had tried to help.

Lobsang Rampa was an Englishman with a Devonshire accent who insisted that he was a Tibetan high lama. He claimed that in 1949 he had transmigrated into the willing body of Cyril Hoskin (born c. 1911) to perform his mission in life. Hoskin had already changed his name in 1948 by deed poll to Dr Carl KuanSuo, on the lama's telepathic suggestion, and this surname was later shortened to Kuan. Rampa's detailed recollections of Tibet and China, his wealth of knowledge about the occult arts and his disarming sincerity led many readers to believe in his authenticity.Rampa's critics claimed that he was a Cornish plumber's son named Cyril Hoskin, and they were vociferous in their condemnation of the author—so much so that his first book about Tibet, The Third Eye, came to be considered one of the greatest literary hoaxes of all time. The critics included Tibetan and oriental scholars, many media representatives and members of the Tibetan community in exile, including many famous personalities.

Published in 1956, The Third Eye is the autobiography of a young Tibetan noble, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, who was sent to a medical lamasery at the age of seven. At Chakpori he was taught medicine, religion, the martial arts and the innermost secrets of Tibetan esoteric science. His awesome psychic powers were facilitated by an operation called "the opening of the third eye", which stimulated the psychic centre of the brain. His patron was the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Rampa witnessed many marvels such as extraterrestrial mummies and yetis.

Despite the critics, Rampa clung on tenaciously, writing his books and continually proclaiming his innocence and authenticity. After his death, his books were relegated to the New Age fringe and were shamelessly plagiarised by other authors. By the 1990s, Lobsang Rampa occupied a full page of The Guinness Book of Fakes, Frauds & Forgeries (Newnham, 1991) and most of his books were out of print.

The Internet has brought together many of Rampa's loyal readers who had benefited from his teachings on the mystical arts and affirmations of the afterlife. The new millennium has revealed Rampa's silent influence in such esoteric fields as ufology, astral projection, aura photography, alternative history and the immortality of the human spirit. His positive image of Tibet has been instrumental in garnering support for this beleaguered land and introducing Buddhism to Westerners. Ironically, The Third Eye remains the most popular book about Tibet ever written.

Lobsang Rampa's personal motto was "I lit a candle". In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of The Third Eye, it is time to rekindle the flame of knowledge that Rampa first lit in 1955 when he started his writing. Overall, Rampa's true identity is irrelevant, as it is his knowledge that lives on. It is time to recognise Lobsang Rampa for what he was: a true mystic and trailblazer of the New Age.

Lobsang Rampa was a unique individual with many extraordinary attributes. In some ways he was a man of contradictions. He was a celibate monk who had a devoted wife, an intensely private man who wrote extensively about his life, a self-professed Tibetan who had no contact with the Tibetan community, and a Buddhist who practised many Western occult arts.

Rampa was cursed by ill health. He suffered from coronary thrombosis, diabetes, arthritis and paraplegia inherited from his host. His hearing was progressively failing as a result of war injuries, and his eyesight became poorer with age. Although he often came across as grumpy in his later years, he never lost his wicked sense of humour and keen wit.

Rampa was a generous man who had little interest in material possessions. Over the years he gave a colour television away to a stranger, a wheelchair to an injured policeman and a house full of furniture to newlyweds. Friends and acquaintances often received expensive gifts which they were unable to return without insulting him. During his lifetime, he personally answered many thousands of letters from his admirers, usually bearing the cost of postage himself. He had a sincere desire to help people.

On the other hand, Rampa had a quick temper and often showed impatience towards selfish and shallow people. He was not one to suffer fools gladly. Over the years, he managed to antagonise feminists, teenagers, Catholics, Western doctors, communists and the Tibetan government in exile. However, his greatest venom was reserved for journalists and literary critics, whom he despised.

Undoubtedly, Lobsang Rampa was a gifted psychic and clairvoyant. He was able to see auras with ease, predict the future and judge a person's character with great accuracy. He could use a crystal ball, cast horoscopes, read palms and project his consciousness beyond his body. His knowledge of Western and Eastern occultism was astonishing. Rampa also had the uncanny ability to communicate with his cats telepathically, as his French-language publisher Alain Stanké testified.

Rampa possessed many other talents, apart from his writing and psychic abilities. He was a keen photographer who produced many splendid photos. Machines of all descriptions purred in his presence, and he was able to fix almost any mechanical problem. Despite his failing eyesight and arthritic hands, he was a master craftsman who created miniature ships, trains and cars. He was also very interested in amateur radio, including short wave.

Lobsang Rampa was a friendly but reserved man who had been forced into seclusion by ill health, public curiosity and media harassment. Wheelchair bound in his later years, Rampa rarely ventured out in public, as the curiosity and enthusiasm of the crowds became unbearable for him. He never attended groups or gave lectures, believing that people progressed spiritually when they studied and meditated in solitude.

Rampa shied away from the media, accusing them of misquoting and harassing him. During his writing career, he allowed only three journalists to interview him or his wife. The first occurred in 1958 while he was bedridden with thrombosis, and the resulting article was so libellous that he was forced to issue a taped rebuttal from his sick bed. After being savaged by a Canadian journalist in 1965, he vowed never to speak again to the press. However, he did allow his friend, agent and publisher Alain Stanké, to interview and film him in Montreal, although he safeguarded himself by recording the whole interview in his book Candlelight (1974). Unfortunately, his refusal to cooperate with the media merely fanned the flames of press and public curiosity. They often followed him relentlessly, spied on him, manufactured interviews and called him a liar and a fake.

Rampa was a devoted and loyal husband to his wife Sarah, who unquestionably believed him to be a true Master. He was a loving and kind father to his adopted daughter Sheelagh Rouse (who joined them as a young, recently separated family friend) as well as his beloved Siamese cats. He paid tribute to his friends Hy Mendelsohn, John Bigras, John Henderson, Valeria Sorock, Mrs O'Grady, Pat Loftus and others in several of his books. Rampa devoted many books to the questions from his loyal readers and continued to promote the Tibetan cause, even though he received no acknowledgement from the Tibetan community.

Fortunately, Rampa never lost his focus. He believed that he had been sent to the West in order to develop an aura camera and a diagnostic device to eradicate disease. His secondary mission was to reveal Tibet's esoteric heritage to the West so that the Western nations would want to rescue his beleaguered country. Even though he did not accomplish his mission, Rampa did enlighten the world with his teachings, which deserve to be re-examined in the new millennium.

This book is dedicated to examining his legacy and promoting the work of a man who believed implicitly that he was a Tibetan lama who transmigrated into the body of an Englishman to fulfil his destiny.

In 1955, Sheelagh Rouse's husband John Rouse wrote a letter of introduction on behalf of Dr Carl Kuan to Charles Gibbs-Smith of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in the hope that he could recommend him for employment. Impressed by the doctor's personality, Gibbs-Smith sent him to Cyrus Brooks, a literary agent of A. M. Heath Publishers. Dr Kuan, possessing a "certificate of considerable elaboration stating that he held degrees in both medicine and surgery from the University of Chungking" (Warburg, p. 221), wanted to find work writing advertising material for medical supplies. Brooks, however, was far more interested in Dr Kuan's recollections as a lama and persuaded him to write his autobiography. On the edge of destitution, Kuan reluctantly sat down and started typing The Third Eye under the pen name of T. Lobsang Rampa.

Brooks approached Frederic Warburg of the respected publishers Secker and Warburg, asking if he would be interested in an autobiography of a Tibetan lama. Warburg expressed interest, and the following day received 100 pages of flimsy yellow typescript. "My excitement was intense; I read it greedily," he recalled. "It had everything it takes to become the world best-seller it is today… But other doubts were there…" (Daily Express, 3 February 1958) Years later in his memoirs, Warburg recalled: "From the beginning there emanated from Dr Kuan's masterpiece a magical aroma of enchantment. The book was literally bewitching. It cast a spell over me. In the months and years to come, it was to cast this spell with an equal potency over millions of readers." (Warburg, p. 222)

Before meeting the mysterious Dr Kuan, Warburg received the rather discouraging news that the manuscript had been rejected by other firms such as Gollancz, Robert Hale and William Collins. Mark Bonham-Carter of Collins showed an "unimaginative scepticism for the author's credentials". (Warburg, p. 223) However, the American publishing house E. P. Dutton accepted the manuscript and signed an agreement for it with a big advance.

Secker and Warburg also signed a contract with Dr Kuan and paid an advance of 800 pounds, divided into increments. Warburg then arranged to meet the enigmatic doctor. His staff were in a flurry of excitement as they tried to spruce themselves up for the occasion! Warburg was impressed with the author. "I took a real fancy to him. Short, slim, dark hair cut into a tonsure, penetrating eyes, aquiline nose, simply dressed in a lounge suit, he was a most unusual figure…" Years later, his description included "...a long nose and full mouth, a swarthy face with prominent ears. Nothing remarkable, nothing which I could wholly associate with what I knew of Tibetan physiognomy. But the eyes were strange, large, luminous, penetrating, under heavy lids and heavy bushy eyebrows. Between the eyes, slightly to the left of centre, a small purplish-red mark could be seen, almost the size of a collar button, the scar no doubt of that remarkable incision." (Warburg, p. 225)

Eventually The Third Eye was finished and Eliott Macrae of E. P. Dutton sent the manuscript to 20 critics, some with reputations as "Far Eastern experts". Their reviews were puzzling and contradictory: what one claimed was impossible was accepted by another. Agehananda Bharati, a German anthropologist (a.k.a. Leopold Fischer) who had converted to Hinduism, wrote scathingly: "I was suspicious before I opened the wrapper; The Third Eye smacked of Blavatskyan hogwash." ("The Persistence of Rampaism", Tibet Society Bulletin, vol. 7, 1974)

Warburg sent the galleys to Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian Tibetologist, to read and informed him that the author was probably a fraud. Harrer had lived in Tibet during and after World War II and had been the current Dalai Lama's personal tutor in Lhasa. His book Seven Years in Tibet had been published in 1953 and was a bestseller. In 1997 it was turned into a movie, with Brad Pitt playing the Austrian mountaineer who had been captured by the British in India before escaping to Tibet with fellow mountaineer Peter Aufschnaiter.

Macrae also sent the manuscript to Hugh Richardson, who had served in the British mission in Lhasa during the 1930s and 1940s. Richardson was fluent in both written and oral Tibetan and had lectured at many academic institutions. He reviewed the manuscript and returned it with some minor corrections which were eventually incorporated into the final version. These concerned the number of earrings worn by Tibetan nobles and the improbability of Rampa's father being an ecclesiastic. He offered the opinion that the book was "a fake built from published works and embellished by a fertile imagination". (Lopez, p. 96)

Other contacts in America were ambivalent in their criticism. While they recognised many inaccuracies in the manuscript, one believed that the author may have come from one of the outlying provinces of Tibet. Another, orientalist John Morris, wrote: "This is a curious mixture of fact and fancy. The descriptions of Lhasa and of Tibetan family life are completely authentic…there is not the slightest doubt that he was brought up in Tibet from an early age… I think there is, however, an element of truth about the author's life in a lamasery, but I feel he has embroidered it…" However, his review took a curious and disturbing turn when he reported: "My own opinion is that the author is some sort of psychopath living in a private neurotic world of his own. It is even likely that he has persuaded himself that all this occult nonsense is true…" (Warburg, p. 235)

British oriental scholars David Snellgrove and Marco Pallis, a practising Buddhist, were also critical. Snellgrove's language was highly emotive. "This fellow is a complete imposter, and has probably never ever been to Tibet… He should be properly unmasked, as such men may be dangerous." (Warburg, p. 234) The word "dangerous" was echoed by critic Chen Chi Chang, who had lectured in Tibetan Tantra at Nanking University. It is a surprising and disquieting adjective, hinting that perhaps Rampa had divulged secret knowledge taught only to initiates and adepts. How else could The Third Eye be considered as dangerous?

Warburg's doubts became overwhelming and he sent for Dr Kuan, accusing him of being a fake. The doctor adamantly denied being a fraud, even when Warburg offered to publish the book as fiction. "Playing the role of cross-examining counsel with a difficult witness, I gave the reasons why I did not believe he could speak or write Tibetan. The reasons were irrefutable. Dr Kuan admitted this. 'When I was captured by the Japanese,' he said, 'they tortured me for secret information about my country. I put a hypnotic block on my knowledge of Tibetan and have never fully recovered my native tongue.'"

Warburg was in a quandary. The criticisms were so contradictory. A few weeks later he cancelled the contract and demanded the advance from Dr Kuan, receiving a sad response: "I am leaving England today—a very sick man indeed. What any of you think of the book does not matter to me now. I wrote the TRUTH." (Warburg, p. 235) On the other hand, The Third Eye was so plausible and "so full of information which many experts confirmed". And there was the company's reputation at stake. He reconsidered his decision and decided to publish and be damned, covering himself with a publisher's foreword.

The Third Eye was published in November 1956, and, after a slow start, sales snowballed. Edition followed edition rapidly. It was quickly translated into German, French and Norwegian. In the first year it sold over 60,000 copies, netting the author over £20,000 in royalties.

Dr Kuan/Rampa, however, suffered his first attack of coronary thrombosis at that time and was strongly advised to leave London for a better climate. With his wife Sarah and Sheelagh Rouse, he moved to Ireland because of its lower taxation. After living in the grounds of Trinity College, the family settled into a rented house overlooking the sea in Howth, near Dublin. The author found peace and happiness amongst the Irish who were both friendly and protective. However, the author's ill health and a constant stream of sightseers to their rented property caused considerable problems and anxiety to the family.

The critics, with the exception of the "Far Eastern experts" who had originally reviewed the manuscript, were generally positive. The old guard of Tibetan and Asian scholars, composed of Richardson, Harrer, Snellgrove and Pallis, were icy in their reviews.

Richardson's review, "Imaginary Tibet", published in the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post on 30 November 1956, began as follows:

"A book which plays up to public eagerness to hear about 'mysterious' Tibet has the advantage that few people have the experience to refute it. But anyone who has lived in Tibet will feel after reading a few pages of The Third Eye that its author T. Lobsang Rampa is certainly not a Tibetan... There are innumerable inaccuracies about Tibetan life and manners which give the impression of Western suburbia playing charades.

"The samples of Tibetan language betray ignorance of both colloquial and literary forms, there is a series of wholly un-Tibetan obsessions with cruelty, fuss and bustle, and, strangely, with cats. Moreover, the turn of phrase in the slick colloquial English is quite unconvincing when attributed to a Tibetan writer..."

David Snellgrove, of London University, wrote his review for the magazine Oriental Art (Summer 1957). He began with "[t]his is a shameless book" and then launched into all the inaccuracies portrayed in The Third Eye. He criticised Rampa's descriptions of Buddhism, the scriptures, mathematics and Tibetan language.

"Pallis declared the book to be a wild fabrication and a libel on both Tibet and its religion. Harrer denounced the book in a scathing review, occasioning a threat of a libel suit from the German publisher." (Lopez, p. 97) Behind the scenes, however, Pallis, Harrer and Richardson were working diligently to dethrone Rampa from the best-seller list.

Meanwhile, journalist John Pitt of the Psychic Times tracked down neighbours of the Kuans who could still recall Cyril Hoskin over 10 years after he had moved from the district. Mrs Ablett from Weybridge remembered him as "...full of strange stories about China where he had been taken as a child. He had been very interested in occult matters, would cast horoscopes for all and sundry and was generally a good conversationalist, if a bit inclined to tell contradictory stories about his past." Mr Boxall recalled, "He told me in 1943 or '44 that he had been a flying instructor in the Chinese air force and badly smashed up in a plane crash when the parachute failed to open." Mr Sutton of East Moseley met Hoskin in 1948 after he had changed his name, and recalled that he was describing himself as Dr Kuan and saying he was born in Tibet, which surprised Mr Sutton. (Evans)

When The Third Eye was reprinted it contained a "statement by the author" which began thus: "In the east it is commonly acknowledged that the stronger mind can take possession of another body." He ended with: "I state most definitely that my books The Third Eye and Medical Lama are true. (Signed) T. Lobsang Rampa" (Lopez, pp. 100-101) This account was followed by one from his wife Sarah, who wrote of how her husband had completely changed after suffering a concussion, and how he had in fact assumed the identity of a Tibetan lama. "When I discussed an event in the past he would have no recollection of it. Instead he spoke of life in a lamasery, or his experiences in the war, prison camp life or Japanese tortures. Since 1949 his whole makeup and manner have been those of an easterner, and his general appearance and colouring have also shown marked change."

The second edition of The Third Eye in 1964 contained a foreword ending with this statement: "My specific reason for insisting that all this is true is that in the near future other people like me will appear, and I do not desire that they should have the suffering that I have had through spite and hatred."

Kenneth Rayner Johnson, in his essay "The Strange Case of Lobsang Rampa" in Rapid Eye 2, said he believed that Rampa obtained the bulk of his material from Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet which had furnished lots of detail about Lhasa, its people, terrain and culture. He felt Rampa had stolen his Tibetan-sounding names from the Dalai Lama, whose birth name was Lhamo Dondup and whose brother was Lobsang Samten. However, this did not account for the other names Rampa used nor the fact that Lobsang and Dondup were common Tibetan names.

In 1997, Heinrich Harrer himself became the victim of the press when Die Stern exposed him as a former member of the Nazi Party and SS. When his inglorious past was revealed during the shooting of the movie Seven Years in Tibet, the author at first indignantly denied it, admitting to it only after documentary evidence was produced. Both he and the Dalai Lama were forced to make emergency revisions to the script, while the Tibetan leader tried to deflect public attention from Harrer. In 1998, Harrer publicly expressed regret for his Nazi affiliations, leaving the public to wonder how much influence he might have had upon the impressionable teenage Dalai Lama when he was his tutor in the 1940s.

In 1999, both Heinrich Harrer and Hugh Richardson responded to my enquiries about Rampa, his sources and their "exposé" of him. Both were still very opposed to Rampa and his books and believed that he had copied other authors and invented much of his material. However, Richardson did concede that Rampa had correctly reproduced the Prophecy in The Third Eye from the Waddell original (Lhasa and Its Mysteries), while Harrer wrote that "[a]ll he copied was correct, but not his visions".

Criticisms by Richardson, Harrer, Pallis and Snellgrove ensured that The Third Eye and subsequent Rampa books would never be endorsed as authentic autobiographical documents by the Tibetan and Buddhist establishments. But is it so simple to dismiss the highly detailed accounts of life in Tibet and China? Even Rampa's most strident critics grudgingly acknowledged that much of his information was correct, although they justified this by accusing him of plagiarism.

The hidden history of Tibet and, indeed, the world, was revealed in great detail by Rampa in such books as The Third Eye (1956), Doctor from Lhasa (1958), Cave of the Ancients (1963), The Hermit (1972), As It Was (1976) and Tibetan Sage (1980). It was engraved in strange symbols upon the wall of a cave beneath the Potala and preserved in hidden repositories throughout Tibet. This history was known only to an elite circle of lamas who had passed through secret stages of initiation.

Rampa and his Guide journeyed deep inside the Potala mountain, through long caverns and secret doors, until they came to a strange star chart engraved upon the walls of a cave. His Guide pointed to the symbols "of giants and machines so strange as to be utterly beyond my comprehension" (The Third Eye, p. 90) and began a lecture which Rampa transcribed in the chapter "When the Earth was Young" of the book Doctor from Lhasa (originally titled Medical Lama). It was a story of truly epic proportions covering millions of years. Many aeons ago, the Earth revolved much closer to the Sun and in the opposite direction. A twin planet revolved nearby. As the days were much shorter, the people seemed to live for hundreds of years; and as the force of gravity was much weaker, people and animals grew to large proportions.

The humans were supervised by a group of benevolent extraterrestrials, the "Gardeners of the Earth", who swept across the skies in their gleaming vehicles, the "chariots of the gods". These physical and intellectual giants eventually fought horrendous wars amongst themselves, causing devastation to the Earth colony. One group let off a super-bomb which knocked the Earth out of its orbit and towards a collision course with the twin planet. Before the collision, the supermen forgot their quarrels and abandoned the Earth to its fate. Very few people survived the cataclysms on land and sea, as huge tsunamis covered many cities built by the super-race. Hundreds of volcanoes belched lava and poisonous gases, blanketing the sky with black clouds. When the uproar died down and the clouds dispersed, the survivors were horrified to see that the Sun seemed to be receding, and it now moved from east to west, rather than from west to east as it had before. The Moon, which appeared in the sky as a product of the collision, caused huge tides to rise and inundate the coastlines.

Eventually the Earth settled down into its new orbit and the days became twice as long. Ice ages developed, while pockets of humanity clung to life in various regions of the world. As the centuries passed, they settled down into villages. Once again, civilisation began to develop. Using the records left by the super-race which were now appearing from the crumbling lava rocks, great technological advances were made, cities were built and vehicles sailed across the skies.

Once more, different factions quarrelled and, unfortunately once more, lethal weapons were deployed. Biological and nuclear warfare devastated whole races of people. A few wise priests, fearing for the future, engraved their history upon golden plates and set up time capsules in a few isolated areas upon the Earth. As they had feared, a new super-weapon was exploded into the stratosphere, destroying all trace of their civilisation. Earthquakes and tsunamis once again racked the world, and Tibet, which had been a low-lying seaside resort for the super-race, was elevated by tectonic forces in only a few minutes. It was in Tibet that the far-seeing priests had hidden their time capsules in a great cave and forgotten city enclosed in a glacier in the Chang Tang Highlands. The survivors were plunged back into the Stone Age and eventually forgot about the lost "Golden Age".

During his final initiation, Rampa came face to face with the gilded mummies of the extraterrestrial super-race beneath the Potala. Three aged abbots led him to an ebony crypt with strange symbols along its sides, and spoke of the gods who came from the skies before the mountains came. He stared in awe at the three gigantic **** figures: a female 10 feet long, and two males over 15 feet long. Each had a large and conical head, a narrow jaw and thin-lipped mouth. The nose was long and thin, and the eyes were straight and deeply recessed.

As part of his initiation, he had to meditate for three days in the tomb while his spirit soared back in time. He had visions of giants gambolling in the warm waters of a Tibetan lake when suddenly a cataclysmic earthquake and massive tsunami inundated the great city. As tectonic forces sent the area soaring thousands of metres, the lake froze, preserving the great city in a huge glacier.

With a small party of monks, Rampa visited this ancient city hidden in a secret valley in the Chang Tang Highlands to the north of Tibet and described it in Doctor from Lhasa. His Guide explained in an awed voice: "Half a million years ago this was the home to the gods… This was a pleasant seaside resort in which lived scientists of a different race and type. They came from another place altogether…but through their experiments they brought calamity upon the earth, and they fled the scene of their disaster leaving the ordinary people of earth behind… Through their experiments the sea rose up and froze." (p. 185)

To reach the city, they crawled across the inhospitable highlands until they found a cleft in a rock, leading to a plain about five miles across. "We found a mighty city, half of it exposed in the hot air of the hidden valley, and the other half buried in the clear ice of a glacier… That part of the city which had thawed out was almost intact. The still air, the absence of wind, had saved the buildings from damage by attrition. We walked along the streets, the first people to tread those streets for thousands of years… We saw many skeletons, petrified skeletons, then we realised that here was a dead city. There were many fantastic devices which indicated that this hidden valley had once been the home of a civilisation far greater than any now upon the face of the earth. It proved conclusively that we were now as savages compared to the people of that bygone age." (DFL, author's foreword)

Rampa was also fortunate enough to visit a second time capsule hidden in the mountains of Tibet, which had been discovered by a group of monks. After crawling inside a cavern, they discovered a massive hall which contained working models of ancient technology and the history of a vanished race. His Guide told him that there were other time capsules, with an identical one in South America "concealed by the peoples of old so that their artefacts would be found by a later generation when the time was ready". (Cave of the Ancients, p. 85)

Rampa's fourth book is devoted to the Tibetan cave and his visit. Before describing his journey, he warned: "The communists are now in Tibet, so the location of the Cave of the Ancients is deliberately being concealed, for the cave is a very real place indeed, and possession of the artefacts there would permit the communists to conquer the world... It is in a secret place, complete with references and sketches, and noted on paper so that when the time comes, forces of freedom can find the place." (ibid.)

The expedition consisted of seven people, including Lobsang, who had to travel for weeks to reach the cave. They discovered glowing blue lights illuminating a huge, almost inaccessible cave which contained many strange machines and devices, some in actual working condition. A huge sphinx crouched against a wall. The monks found a recording device which showed them scenes of the lost civilisation: strange creatures which wandered the planet, winged vehicles that traversed the skies, animals and humans communicating telepathically. Dissentions arose; priests ranted about their own kind of salvation, while scientists developed more and more lethal weapons. A few priests, fearful for the future, decided to inaugurate this cave so that later generations could learn from their technology. Other chambers were built in Egypt, South America and Siberia, each spot marked by a sphinx. The war escalated and the wise men decided to seal the Cave of the Ancients, their farewell speech telling any future discoverer that mankind was about to destroy itself. They said: "Within these vaults are stored such records of our achievements and follies as may benefit those of a future race who have the intelligence to discover it, and, having discovered it, be able to understand it."

The picture faded and the lamas went into a trance to consult the Akashic records to determine the fate of the capsule. They saw the cave being sealed by a huge crane a few months before a massive bomb sent the Earth reeling on its axis. Great quakes and tsunamis destroyed every vestige of this advanced civilisation and left only a few terrified survivors huddling inside caves to propagate the human race.

In Feeding the Flame (1971), Rampa wrote more about the buried time capsules and what they contained. A huge chamber beneath the Egyptian sands "is an absolute museum of artefacts which existed tens of thousands of years ago". These capsules contained antigravitic aircraft, where "the power of the motor is not expended in supporting the weight but is used just to propel the vehicle forward". "I will tell you quite truthfully that I have seen such aircraft." (FTF, p. 146) Antigravity was also used to move heavy objects, with a special device which could neutralise any weight. Photography and television were highly developed, so that images could appear in 3-D. These artefacts would be discovered in future years "when there will be earthquakes which will really shake up the crust of the earth and these time capsules will be thrown up to the surface ready to be opened".

In As it Was, Rampa recounted a visit to another cave near Lhasa which contained engravings of people in strange garb with transparent globes on their heads. His Guide explained: "This is a very strange area. Thousands and thousands of years ago there was a mighty civilisation upon this earth. It was known as the time of Atlantis." (p. 74) Shelves built into the cave walls contained strange grooved discs about six feet in diameter, with an undulating wave on the surface and a hole in the centre. This description bears a remarkable resemblance to the so-called Dropa stones reputed to have been discovered in the Bayan Kara-Ula caves of the Tibetan–Chinese border in 1938. These stones, which have subsequently disappeared from Chinese museums, had a script which was allegedly deciphered by Professor Tsum Um Nui. His controversial translation told the story of a group of small, spindly extraterrestrials who crashed in the region 12,000 years ago. Some died, others were killed and a few intermarried with the local population, producing a race of short-statured people called the Dropa. Although this story was originally published in a Russian magazine, it was picked up by Erich von Däniken in his book Gods from Outer Space (1978).

Rampa's final book, Tibetan Sage, contained more details of the lost civilisation near Lhasa. He claimed that a mountain outside the capital was in reality a hollowed command centre for a rebel faction of aliens who had built it millions of years ago. This centre also kept human bodies in suspended animation, awaiting the transmigration of aliens to reanimate them. Their science and medicine were highly advanced. A special healing bath was able to rejuvenate the Lama Mingyar Dondup's injured legs, while an invisible force-field prevented food and other objects from succumbing to decay. Lobsang and his Guide studied the cave for a week and then departed, setting off booby traps to destroy all evidence of the cave's existence.

Tibetan Sage told of numerous past civilisations which were known by the generic term of Atlantis. Some had excelled in genetic engineering and created man-beasts as domestics, such as the merfolk of legend. This book also spoke of sunken lands in the North and South Atlantic, near Japan and off the coast of Turkey.

Rampa's books revealed a remarkable consistency of detail about antediluvian civilisations, revelations which should be compared with both the archaeological record and esoteric doctrine. Throughout his books, Rampa stated that:

1. Tibet was the centre of an earlier civilisation when it was a low-lying land.

2. The earliest humans were extraterrestrial in origin, gigantic in stature and with conical heads.

3. Humans have been on this Earth for millions of years and there have been many antediluvial civilisations which reached a high level of technology.

4. These cultures were destroyed by atomic warfare or natural cataclysms such as earthquakes, tsunamis and pole shifts, often without warning.

5. Another planet once struck the Earth, spilling its ocean of petroleum onto our planet.

6. Atlantis is really only a generic name for lost civilisations. There were other lost civilisations in Lemuria and the Arctic.

7. Time capsules were buried by the ancients in Tibet, Egypt, South America and Siberia.

8. The pyramids and the Sphinx are symbols which point to lost civilisations. Pyramids were also beacons for extraterrestrial vehicles.

Needless to say, T. Lobsang Rampa's assertions are just as unpopular today with academia as they were in the 1950s. Surprisingly, however, new discoveries continue to bring into question the accepted chronology of human civilisation. The myth of Atlantis is just as enduring in the third millennium as it was in Plato's day, but today there is solid evidence that civilisations flourished upon the now inundated continental shelves of Asia and Central America. Graham Han****'s seminal book Underworld demonstrated conclusively that the flooded coastlines contain ruins from cultures older than the Sumerian. Han**** and his wife Saantha Faiia, both seasoned divers, have explored ruins that were discovered in 2001 in the Gulf of Cambay on the west and off Mahabalipuram on the east of the Indian sub-continent.

The South China Sea around Okinawa and Yonaguni is peppered with megalithic-type ruins which were only discovered in the mid-1980s and 1990s. While these ruins are truly impressive, they pale in comparison with the deep-water ruins photographed by a Russian research vessel off the coast of Cuba in 2001. These ruins lie over two kilometres deep at the bottom of the Caribbean. As revealed by sonograph, they show grid-patterned streets and geometrical structures. Only tectonic forces, rather than coastal flooding, could have plunged a city to the bottom of the sea! In November 2004, it was reported that ruins beneath the Mediterranean Sea have been discovered off the coast of Cyprus, towards Turkey. There are also rumours of underwater ruins near Bimini, Malta and Britain.

When Rampa published his first two books in the 1950s, few people believed that sudden and cataclysmic forces had shaped the Earth's past. Immanuel Velikovsky, a scientist who tried to prove that major upheavals have occurred regularly throughout the Earth's history, was vilified by the establishment, which tried to ban his books Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval. He was also one of the first scientists to warn us of dangers from comets and asteroids, for they had struck our planet in the past. Velikovsky was the first scientist to hypothesise that Venus would be boiling hot and that Jupiter would possess a huge magnetic field. Both he and Rampa believed that the Earth had once been impacted by another planet which had emptied its petroleum oceans into our planet's crust.Archaeological evidence for ancient civilisations in Tibet is scant because Western archaeologists have never been allowed to excavate, and the current Chinese occupiers are far more interested in exploiting Tibet's resources. In Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer recounted how his friend Peter Aufschnaiter indulged in some amateur archaeology in Lhasa and discovered evidence of burial practices indicative of an earlier culture. Harrer as well as Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich acknowledged the rumour that huge subterranean caverns exist beneath the Potala Palace.

In 2002, a report about anomalous artefacts in the Qinghai Tibetan area was posted on the Internet. Li Heng of People's Daily Online (25 June) wrote: "The widespread news of mysterious iron pipes at the foot of Mt Baigong, located in the depths of the Qaidam Basin, Qinghai Province, has roused concern from related departments. Some experts believe that these might be relics left behind by extraterrestrial beings, for the site, with its high altitude and thin, crisp air, has long been held as an ideal place to practise astronomy." He speaks of three caves, with the middle one being the largest. "What is astonishing is inside, for there is a half-pipe about 40 centimetres in diameter tilting from the top to the inner end of the cave... At the opening of the cave there are a dozen pipes, at the diameter between 10 and 40 centimetres, that run straight into the mountain... About 80 metres away from the caves is the shimmering Toson Lake, on whose beach many iron pipes can be found scattered on sand and rocks… Most strange is that there are also some pipes in the lake, some reaching above water surface and some buried below, with similar shapes and thickness [as compared] with those on the beach."

On 12 February 2004, Greg Taylor of Phenomena News provided an update that the site was to be examined by scientists. "A sample of these scraps was analysed once by the local smeltery, and were found to be composed of 30 per cent ferric oxide with a large amount of silicon dioxide and calcium dioxide. 'The large content of silicon dioxide and calcium oxide is a result of long interaction between iron and sandstone, which means the pipes must be very old,' said Liu Shaolin, the engineer who did the analysis." The area is sparsely populated and has very little industry, leading many to call the site an "ET launching pad".

Over the past few centuries, other anomalous objects have been discovered which put doubt on the classical theory of evolution. These out-of-place artefacts ("ooparts")—from million-year-old shoeprints to a bell vase blasted out of solid coal—periodically turn up all around the world. Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson documented thousands of anomalous archaeological finds in their huge book, Forbidden Archeology.

On 30 April 2002, the Russian newspaper Pravda announced the extraordinary discovery of a stone slab covered with a relief map of the Ural region. "The question is about a great plate found in 1999, with a relief map of the region done according to an unknown technology... The map contains civil engineering work: a system of channels with a length of about 12,000 km, weirs and powerful dams. Not far from the channels, diamond-shaped grounds are shown... The map also contains some inscriptions…done in a hieroglyphic-syllabic language of unknown origin. The scientists never managed to read it…" Professor Alexandr Chuvyrov, the team leader, claimed that shells embedded in the surface indicated that the map was about 120 million years old, when the south magnetic pole was situated in Franz Joseph Land. It was also part of a much larger map, possibly of the whole Earth and measuring 340 square metres. Could this map have been created by those ETs whom Rampa called "the Gardeners of the Earth", who caused such devastation with their warfare?

There are many documented discoveries of gigantic human remains, mostly discovered and then "lost" by museums over the past century. In Lost Cities of North and Central America, David Hatcher Childress reprinted many newspaper reports and even scientific studies of gigantic human bones from the Americas. Peter Kolosimo in Timeless Earth wrote: "A human skeleton 17 feet tall has been found in Gargayan, in The Philippines, and bones of other human creatures over 10 feet tall have been found in southeastern China. According to palaeontologist Pei Wen-chung, these are at least 300,000 years old… Stone implements of giant size have been found in Moravia and Syria, where the bones of their users have been found nearby. In Ceylon, explorers have found the remains of creatures which must have been about 13 feet tall, and in Tura Assam…a human skeleton measuring 11 feet has come to light." (p. 31) Kolosimo also documented the many legends of giants which can be found around the world from Australia to China, from Europe to the Middle East.

Cone-headed skulls, such as those belonging to the mummies Rampa saw beneath the Potala, have also come to light in Peru, Malta and Syria. The museum of Paracas in Peru contains many skeletons from that arid area, including cone-headed skulls with a cranial capacity of between 2200 and 2500 cc, greatly exceeding our brain capacity of 1450 cc. The Paracas skulls seem to represent another human species—not people like the Amerindians and Egyptians who bound their heads.

It is surprising to discover that Rampa used the term "chariots of the gods" over a decade before Erich von Däniken wrote his book of the same name. The so-called chariots of the gods, or vimanas, were first described by Desmond Leslie as co-author with George Adamski of the famous 1953 book Flying Saucers Have Landed. These vimanas are described in great detail in ancient Indian literature, leading alternative historians like Hatcher Childress to believe they belonged to the technologically advanced Rishi civilisation of about 12,000 years ago. Ancient Indian texts such as the Mahabharata also speak of weapons of mass destruction, including a bomb with a brightness exceeding 10,000 suns which caused the skin to fall off its hapless victims. Even the most sceptical historian would find it hard to dismiss the similarity between these weapons and modern thermonuclear bombs.

There are also examples of inexplicable radioactivity in some ancient cities of the Indus civilisation on the Indian subcontinent. The very ancient city of Mohenjo-daro, with its modern grid-like layout, was found to have extremely radioactive skeletons lying in its streets. Lumps of glass, originally clay pots that had melted under extreme heat, have been found. Modern historians do not have an adequate explanation for the downfall of the Indus civilisation and the radioactive anomalies discovered there. In other places such as the Middle East and Scotland, an inexplicable heat source vitrified forts and melted sand into glass in antiquity.

Rampa declared in The Cave of the Ancients that the sphinx had been a universal symbol of antediluvial civilisations. Although conventional historians date it at about 3000 BCE, alternative historians such as Graham Han**** and Robert Bauval speculate that the Giza Sphinx could date to 10,500 BCE, connecting it with the constellation of Leo which was in ascendancy at that time, while John Anthony West puts it in the post-glacial period at between 5000 to 10,000 BCE. Geologist Robert Schoch thinks the Sphinx was created around 5000 BCE, or 7000 BCE at the earliest. The Sphinx was recently discovered to have chambers beneath it, and limited excavations have revealed a burial chamber called "the tomb of Osiris". However, many alternative archaeologists believe there is a buried city beneath the Giza plateau, a belief influenced by such mystics as Edgar Cayce and Lobsang Rampa.

In these days of infrared satellite photography, it is almost impossible to believe that an ancient city could exist in the mountains without being detected. Amazingly, in 1998 a group of American mountaineers discovered a verdant valley perched high in an inaccessible gorge of the Himalayas. Totally unknown to Europeans, this valley with its semi-tropical vegetation had remained hidden from satellites for decades. In 2003, a huge, hidden glacier was discovered in the Himalayas, unknown to Chinese and Western cartographers. Who, then, can safely say that other great discoveries do not lie hidden in a glacier or a cave in the world's highest mountain range?

"Flying saucers? Of course there are flying saucers! I have seen many, both in the sky and on the ground, and I have even been for a trip in one. Tibet is the most convenient country of all for flying saucers. It is remote from the bustle of the everyday world, and is peopled by those who place religion and scientific concepts before material gain. Throughout the centuries, the people of Tibet have known the truth about flying saucers, what they are, why they are, how they work, and the purpose behind it all. We know of the flying saucer people as the gods in the sky in their fiery chariots." ("Home of the Gods" in My Visit to Venus)

Like many writers of the 1950s, such as George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson, Rampa described benevolent extraterrestrials who had come to warn humanity about the follies of nuclear power. During the following decades, his discussions on extraterrestrials became more sophisticated and on the cutting edge of UFO research, particularly with The Hermit (1971) which introduced the ideas of human abduction and experimentation for genetic engineering purposes. Clearly, Rampa's revelations of extraterrestrial genetic engineering pre-dated Zechariah Sitchin's Earth Chronicles series, and yet his influence in this genre is unrecognised.

My Visit to Venus, an anthology of Rampa chapters which had been rejected from earlier books, was published without authorisation in late 1958 or early 1959 by Gray Barker, an American who ran Saucerian Bulletin. Prior to Barker's book, it had been published in various magazines such as Flying Saucer Review. Rampa did not want it published, fearing it would be dismissed as science fiction.

The opening chapter, "Home of the Gods", continues on from Doctor from Lhasa's description of a visit to the Chang Tang Highlands, where the lamas discovered a huge, ancient city. Half frozen in a glacier, this city had once accommodated a race of giants. "Nearby in a spacious courtyard, there was an immense metal structure which reminded me of two of our temple dishes clamped together and was clearly a vehicle of some sort." The monks cautiously approached the vehicle, which was about 50 to 60 feet (15.24 to 18.29 metres) across, and ascended a ladder leading inside. Once inside, Rampa's Guide touched something which caused the ship to hum and emit a bluish light.

To their surprise, they were approached by large humans who communicated telepathically: "Be not afraid, for we were aware of your coming for the past hundred years. We made provisions so that those who were intrepid enough to enter this vessel should know the past." The humanoids showed them pictures from the past civilisation: huge buildings which sat by the sea with disc- like vehicles soaring above. They witnessed an enormous explosion which toppled the buildings and caused a tsunami to rise above the ruins. The humanoids told them of a "White Brotherhood", composed of incarnate and discarnate entities, which safeguarded all life.

The chapter continued with the seven lamas being taken up into space from where they could see Tibet. The vehicle left the atmosphere, with no increase in gravity or sensation of speed, and soared into space. The monks were taken on a tour of the spaceship. Its propulsion system utilised a form of magnetism which repelled the Earth's magnetism. The repelling force could be adjusted to allow the vessel to hover, rise or sink. The ship was also capable of collecting "space electricity"—a form of magnetism based upon cosmic energy.

The Venusian hosts took the lamas in a strange vehicle to the Hall of Knowledge, where they observed the Earth's creation along with the mighty civilisations of Lemuria, Atlantis and Poseidonia. The Broad One warned: "We guard the Earth, for, if man's folly is allowed to go unchecked, terrible things will happen to the race of man. There are powers upon the Earth, human powers who oppose all thoughts of our ships, who say there is nothing greater than the human upon Earth, so there cannot be ships from other worlds."

Eventually, after many days, the Tibetans were returned to Earth "which now seemed a tawdry place" and "paled into significance against the glory of Venus". The story ended with this: "Never again, I thought, shall I see such wonderful things. How mistaken I was, for that was but the first of many trips."

During the 1960s the subject of ufology became established, and Rampa in his books Chapters of Life and Beyond the Tenth expanded the theme of aliens as the guardians and indeed creators of the Earth. He described UFOs as being of four distinct types:

1. Extraterrestrials. These Gardeners of the Earth, an extremely advanced race from another galaxy, colonised our planet billions of years ago. Every now and then they come back to check on the progress of the human race.

2. Inner Earth inhabitants. In the Venus anthology, they are described as advanced humanoids who live in the Earth's interior and sometimes use their vehicles to explore the Earth's surface. This theme was later expanded in Twilight.

3. Antimatter vehicles. These explode when they come into contact with the Earth's atmosphere.

4. Interdimensional vehicles containing aliens from other realms. Usually we are unable to perceive these aliens, as they vibrate at a different frequency to human beings. We can only perceive their vehicles as gyrating lights in the sky, a third- dimensional shadow of fourth-dimensional vehicles.

Beyond the Tenth was published in 1969, the same year that Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? was published in English. While the Swiss author built his case upon incongruous ancient anomalies, Rampa stated unequivocally that "Earth is like a colony; Earth is a testing ground, a seeding place where different types are put together so that the Gardeners of Space can see how they get on together" (p. 77). He claimed that even though the Gardeners were friendly and concerned with our welfare, they sometimes abducted and experimented upon humans in an effort to improve our species. Rampa was also aware of censorship surrounding the reporting of UFOs in the West. "The pilots who fly the [aircraft], whether in a commercial capacity or in connection with the armed forces, have seen and will continue to see UFOs but, until the moronic governments of the world change their attitudes, not much will be heard of those sightings. The Argentinian government is surely one of the most enlightened in that they officially recognise the existence of UFOs." (p. 86) The military clique cannot acknowledge UFOs because it would compromise security and reveal their vulnerability. He noted that any reference that astronauts make to UFOs while they're in space is deleted and their photos destroyed. While this may have sounded like unfounded paranoia in the 1960s, many people today believe there has been a monstrous government conspiracy of silence lasting over 50 years—a belief fuelled by such TV shows as The X-Files, Dark Skies, The Smoking Gun and Roswell.

Rampa also claimed that religious leaders would not acknowledge UFOs because it would shake their paradigm that man is made in the image of God, if an advanced alien appeared to be non-human.

Further, he noted: "If the UFO people had wanted to take over the Earth, they could have done it centuries ago. The point is, they are afraid that they will have to take over the Earth (and they do not want to) if the Earth goes on releasing too much hard atomic radiation. These spacemen are the Gardeners of the Earth. They are trying to save the Earth from the Earth people—and what a time they are having!" (p. 89)

Five years before Sitchin wrote his cult classic The Twelfth Planet, expounding the belief that extraterrestrials had seeded and genetically engineered the human race, Rampa explained the whole process in The Hermit. The story began with a blind old Tibetan hermit imparting his knowledge to "the chosen one". In his youth he had been abducted by an advanced race who revealed themselves as "the Gardeners of the Earth". They took him to another galaxy and performed medical experiments upon his unwilling body, including brain surgery to increase his intelligence. Bluntly they informed him that the Earthlings were a very evil race who threatened to destroy not only themselves but other intelligent life on nearby worlds.

The Gardeners informed him: "We travel in universes putting people and animals on many different worlds. You Earthlings have your legends about us; you refer to us as gods of the sky. Now we are to give you information as to the origin of life on Earth…for it is time that people knew the truth of their gods before we initiate the second phase." (p. 14) They transported the blind monk to another galaxy and implanted artificial sight so that he could witness the wonders of their civilisation. He was taken to the centre of the empire, where "the colours were all wrong. The grass was red and the rocks were yellow. The sky was of a greenish cast and there were two suns." (p. 104)

The empire was vast and incorporated many different planets and star systems which co-existed in harmony. The inhabitants were humanoids with varied characteristics and features. There were vast cities of towering spires traversed by flying vehicles of all descriptions. This world was the headquarters of the vast empire, where every planet was self-governing but owed allegiance to the Master of the World.

The Gardeners took the monk to an orbiting observatory where nine wise men were in charge of observing the Akashic records of Earth and other worlds. They showed him the history of the world, beginning with a huge comet colliding with a dead world at the centre of the galaxy, sending out gobbets of incandescent gas which eventually became the planets. Two expeditions explored the new worlds while a third dropped biological specimens onto the land and into the seas. Millennia later, a fourth expedition delivered huge dinosaurs to planet Earth. However, after many years the Earth was wobbling on its axis, so a vessel was despatched to break up the supercontinent with a laser beam.

Another expedition brought purple humanoids to the Earth which had eight breasts and long, ape-like arms. They lived in caves and could not use fire, so the Gardeners were forced to exterminate them to make room for more advanced humans. After thousands of years and climate change, these humans developed a mighty civilisation. But the Gardeners fraternised too freely with the Earthlings, especially the women. A group stole their technology, attacked them and let off a nuclear device which wreaked havoc upon the Earth, sinking whole cities and continents beneath the oceans.

For centuries the Gardeners stayed away from the irradiated planet but eventually returned with more human and animal specimens, distributing them on different continents. Mankind eventually evolved and built towns and cities, while the supervising Gardeners were worshipped as gods by the Earth inhabitants.

From another galaxy, a warlike race with **** growths on their forehead attacked the empire and laid waste to our solar system. Cataclysmic battles took place in the heavens: atmospheres were blasted away and worlds destroyed. A planet, dislodged from its orbit, struck the Earth, causing a catastrophic loss of life. Only a few humans and animals, aided by the Gardeners, were conveyed to safety in a great ark.

On the Earth, a great ice age developed. The Gardeners now decided to live apart from humans and dwell on mountains. Some inexperienced Gardeners, the "gods of Olympus", engaged in licentious behaviour and were transferred to other worlds. So the Gardeners then decided to communicate only through suitably chosen natives such as Moses, Buddha and Jesus, who were instructed to institute new religions. But always the priests perverted the true teachings for their own power and gain.

The hermit was returned to a comfortable cave in Tibet where he was told a "chosen one" would come many years later to hear his wisdom. The Gardeners decided that even though the auras of the human race were faulty, mankind would be given another chance. However, if humans did not heed such warnings and stop polluting their planet with radioactivity, the Gardeners would be forced to intervene at any time in the future.

In Tibetan Sage, Rampa provided more information about these Gardeners, although he repeated many themes from earlier books. With his Guide, he visited an artificial cave which "...used to be the headquarters of a special race who could do space travel and just about everything else.

Through millions of years, it still works; everything is intact." (p. 19) This cave was part of a network created millions of years ago when Tibet was a low-lying land. It contained a space vehicle "about four or five men tall and looked something like two dishes, one on top of the other" (p. 23). The similarity of this description with the one given in "Home of the Gods" in My Visit to Venus is obvious. These extraterrestrials had the technology to melt solid rock and heal traumatic wounds with a special bath. They were able to suspend life so that people could exist for millions of years, "receiving adequate nourishment to keep the body functioning on a minute scale" (TS, p. 28). These suspended bodies were being kept alive in tubs in order to provide bodies for aliens to transmigrate into at a future date.

The Lama Mingyar Dondup could read their inscriptions and learned that the suspended aliens were actually evil Gardeners who had raped human women and performed genetic experiments. They were a renegade faction who had waged many wars against the other Gardeners—wars that Rampa observed on one of their devices which contained the Akashic records. (This is the fourth time Rampa claimed to have viewed the Akashic records; he had described them in the Venusian ship, the Cave of the Ancients and the orbiting observatory.) As Rampa and his Guide departed from the caves, the whole complex was destroyed by booby traps.

Even if Rampa's stories are dismissed as science fiction, there is merit in some of his original themes. His warnings from the extraterrestrials to stop our nuclear folly were not original, as other contactees in the 1950s—particularly Daniel Fry and Richard Miller—had said the same. Venusians were very popular with contactees in the 1950s before space probes revealed Venus to be an inhospitable planet. Frank Stranges said he had been in contact with Val Thor, and George Adamski claimed to have flown to Venus with friendly aliens years before Rampa's jaunt to our closest neighbour. Nor was Rampa the first to speak of levitators and telepathic communication with aliens, as George Van Tassel and George King had made earlier claims. Furthermore, in 1953 in Flying Saucers Have Landed, Desmond Leslie first popularised the notion that the ancient Indian scriptures contained many references to the vehicles of the extraterrestrial gods.

However, some of Rampa's ideas were original and may have influenced later writers. His descriptions of Earth from space and warp travel with anti-magnetic propulsion were quite novel for the pre-space-flight era. The Hermit described alien abduction, experimentation and genetic engineering at least a decade before Whitley Strieber wrote his influential Communion. Recently the idea that extraterrestrials were responsible for the evolution of humans and other animals has been incorporated into a new theory called "interventionism" by Lloyd Pye, who challenges Darwinism and creationism. Zechariah Sitchin, one of the proponents of this theory, claimed that the Mesopotamian gods, the Annunaki, were extraterrestrials from the 12th planet, Nibiru, who genetically engineered the terrestrial hominids to produce a new species, Homo sapiens, about 200,000 years ago. Sitchin's influence in alternative history is undeniable, as terms like Annunaki and Nibiru have passed into the New Age lexicon. However, Lobsang Rampa, whose book The Hermit tells us who the aliens are, where they are from and why they are visiting and abducting humans, is virtually unknown.

"There are passages which reach to the ends of the Earth. The Earth has a spine just as we have, but the spine of the Earth is made of rock… This tunnel was man-made in the days of Atlantis when they knew how to make rock flow like water without generating heat. I have travelled extensively and I know that this rocky spine extends from the North Pole to the South Pole." (As it Was, p. 75)Lobsang Rampa wrote extensively of inhabited, underground caverns, tunnels and cities in Twilight, As it Was and "The Subsurface World" chapter of My Visit to Venus. In Twilight, he introduced the topic of the subterranean realm of Agharta (or Agharti) with its capital city Shamballah (or Shambhala) and omnipotent ruler, "the King of the world". Rampa strongly hinted that the mysterious (unidentified) island Ultima Thule and the loss of the US nuclear submarines Thresher and Scorpion were somehow connected with this underground civilisation and its denizens.

In occult and Buddhist lore, the realms of Shamballah and Agharta are usually situated underground in the Himalayas or Central Asian deserts. In the earlier decades of the 20th century, Russian explorers Ferdinand Ossendowski and Nicholas Roerich travelled throughout Central Asia seeking the fabled land and city. Ossendowski first mentioned Agharta in his 1922 book Beasts, Men and Gods. Tibetan lamas had told him that the thousands of people living underground in Agharta were ruled by "the King of the world". The inhabitants of Agharta are believed to possess advanced powers capable of destroying whole areas of the planet, although they choose to live in peace. Roerich, a respected traveller, mystic and Theosophist, also believed in these subterranean lands but was unable to provide any scientific evidence of their existence. In his 1929 book Heart of Asia, his main interest centred on the spiritual dynamics of Shamballah and its importance as a symbol in the coming "New Age" of enlightenment and peace.

In a booklet titled Agharta (1951), American Buddhist Robert Dickhoff wrote: "Agharta began some 60,000 years ago when a tribe led by a holy man disappeared underground. The inhabitants were said to number many millions and had a science superior to any found on the surface of the Earth… The few remaining tunnels open to the surface world are in Tibet, Siberia, Africa, South and North America and on remote islands which were once the mountain peaks of Atlantis." In 1960, Dr Raymond Bernard commented in his book The Subterranean World: "Belief in the existence of a subterranean world, which was given the name of Agharti, is universal and an integral part of the Buddhist faith. Another sacred word amongst Buddhists is Shamballah, the name of the subterranean world capital." (Alec Maclellan, The Lost World of Agharthi)

Nicholas Roerich had heard from learned lamas of underground passages and a lake beneath the Potala: "If you have seen this underground lake, you must have been either a very great lama or a torch bearer." Harrer recounted this story in his book Seven Years in Tibet (p. 185).

In The Third Eye, Rampa described his visit to the tunnels of the Potala. According to his Guide, a group of monks had once tried to explore this mysterious lake but some had drowned. The survivors managed to exit the cave and found themselves in a swamp about 40 miles from the Potala. Later Rampa was able to study the passages himself, climbing ever downwards through secret doors until he reached a lake which was the remnant of an ancient sea. Years later, he returned to the caverns to undergo the "Ceremony of the Little Death" amongst the mummified bodies of gigantic extraterrestrials who had once walked the Earth as gods.

In Twilight, Rampa introduced Rigden Jyepo, the King of the world who dwells in Shamballah. "In Tibetan lore there is much mention of Shamballah where the King of all the world lives, the King who is hidden from millions on the surface of the world. Tibetans firmly believe in the King of the world living inside the world, not as some sort of demon but as an extremely good king, a good spiritual ruler who is alive in two planes at once, the physical, where he lives for ever and ever, and the astral plane, where similarly he lives for ever and ever… Tibetans believe that the King of the world gave his first instructions to the first Dalai Lama... who is the outer representative of the inner-world king." (p. 20)

The current Dalai Lama has often been asked about Agharta and Shamballah in Tibetan mythology. In a non-committal way, he gave this enigmatic response: "Shamballah exists, yes, but not in any conventional sense." (Hicks and Chogyam, Great Ocean, p. 92)

In 2003, Inner Light published My Visit to Agharta, which was purportedly retrieved from the estate papers of a New York bookseller, Jim Rigberg. The publisher claims that Lobsang Rampa often sent Rigberg his rejected writings, which were incorporated into the 2003 edition. In this story, Rampa and his Guide journeyed through caverns to the inner kingdom of Agharta, encountering both malevolent and benevolent races along the way. Eventually they reached a vortex which transported them, and millions of other enlightened souls, to the sacred land of Agharta in the centre of the Earth. In Agharta, "the Creator" appeared as a luminous sphere, addressing each pilgrim separately with a message of love and hope.

While this story has a feelgood "New Age" appeal, it does not sound like a Rampa creation. More suspiciously, Rampa's secretary Sheelagh Rouse has no recollection of ever typing it or anything of that genre.

Rampa originally discussed the inner world and its inhabitants in "The Subsurface World" chapter of the My Visit to Venus anthology. "There are a number of natural orifices on the world which give access to the inner world. One is in the Andes, another in the Gobi Desert, and another…beyond the Shetland Islands…eternally wrapped in swirling fog is known as Ultima Thule, the Last Island." The British Royal Navy once visited it to conduct a survey, but what they encountered became highly classified. "Very strange happenings indeed took place, and in the secret records of the British Admiralty there are records of truly fantastic happenings on Ultima Thule, happenings which are so incredible that the reports have long been suppressed and kept under close guard."

The very existence of this island is a mystery, as the only North Sea island which nominally fits Rampa's description of Ultima Thule is Jan Mayen, currently ruled by Norway. Uninhabited except for a manned weather station, it is dominated by a huge active volcano, Beerenberg. It is a bleak island, but there is little else to recommend it as an island of great mystery. To make matters even more confusing, in Chapters of Life Rampa described Ultima Thule as a gateway to another dimension.

In Germanic and Nordic mythologies, Ultima Thule is known as part of the sunken continent of Hyperborea, but it has no place on modern maps. Perhaps it is in the same category as Peary's Crocker Land or Cook's Bradley Land which were observed in the high Arctic and then disappeared, probably because they were mirages. Furthermore, the mid-Atlantic Ridge is an area of intense seismic activity, as was evidenced when the Icelandic island of Surtsey rose from the waves in the 1960s. In Invisible Horizons, Vincent Gaddis wrote of literally dozens of islands which have been charted and subsequently disappeared. "That islands may sink below the waves is not in any way unbelievable or even extraordinary. Submarine archeologists have mapped dozens of them along with many quite deeply sunken coastlines. Volcanic activity alone has accounted for many cases of submergence that have been properly and fully witnessed and examined." (p. 32)

Rampa introduced the inner-world inhabitants in "The Subsurface World" as: "...people who dislike those humans who dwell upon the surface of the Earth. They are not benevolent people at all: they have instead a horror dread of those who dwell in the sunlight. They are a small colony of people who live inside the Earth." Their flight capability was "a glorified type of air vehicle not a great deal better than the puny aircraft which we surface people possess, and these inner-worlders cannot travel any great distance into space". An extinct volcano had created many lava tubes through which the inner-worlders—"not unlike humans"—sometimes visit the surface. Although they dislike the surface dwellers, they never attack unless provoked. "Often they take flight, and with their abnormally high speed they can outdistance anything which the surface people have at present."

In As it Was, the Lama Mingyar Dondup took Lobsang to another complex of caverns near Lhasa which contained strange artefacts and carvings. He told him of tunnels reaching from the north to the south pole, while others, which were sealed, reached into the Earth's interior. Lobsang learned of a race of people who had once entered the caverns to escape the surface cataclysms, sealing the entrance behind them. Beneath the surface, they developed their own sciences which were often more advanced than those upon the surface. Dondup said: "We of the higher lama class have often visited this place and tried to commune with those below by telepathy…but they want nothing to do with us…and if necessary they will intervene." (p. 77)

Mingyar Dondup described the inner world and its inhabitants: "They have a sun something like we have but theirs is much smaller and much more powerful. They have much more than we have, but they are very much more intelligent." Long ago these inner-worlders discovered the principles of flight. "Sometimes they come out of the Earth in special vehicles…which fly around on the outside of the Earth to see what people are doing and to ascertain if their own safety is jeopardised by the folly of those whom they term 'the outsiders'." (ibid.)

In Feeding the Flame, Rampa had more to say about inner-world dwellers. "Yes there was an Atlantis, and there are living remnants of Atlantis still, deep underground in a certain part of the world, and let me make it clear that that part of the world is not Mount Shasta; this is just an ordinary area which has been over-publicised by people who wanted to make not just a quick buck, but a whole sack of them." (p. 148)

In Twilight, Rampa devoted a whole chapter to the hollow Earth question. "I have believed it for years and I have studied it thoroughly. I have read all about it [and believe] there is another world inside this Earth of ours that is 2.9 times the size of the Moon, and that it is populated by a very intelligent race." He continued: "I have been in some of those tunnels, and I have also been in some of those tunnels in Ultima Thule. There are certain places in the Earth where it is possible for the Initiate to travel down into the centre of the Earth and meet representatives of that inner civilisation… Brazil and Tibet are two vitally important parts of the outer world which have a special attraction for the inner people." (p. 21) Furthermore, he claimed that the Gobi Desert and its pyramids have a connection to the inner world.

Rampa presented his case for the hollow Earth theory with these points:

1. Commercial airlines do not actually fly over the poles, as the navigational instruments would go awry.

2. No one has ever really been to the poles, only near them.

3. There is an atomic sun in the centre of the Earth which is responsible for the auroras.

4. The current model of geophysics (crust/mantle/core) is not based upon any solid evidence, merely supposition.

5. The inner Earth is about 2.9 times bigger than the Moon. This makes it actually larger than the land area on the outside of the Earth.

6. Inner worlders are remnants of Lemuria/Mu/Atlantis and even older civilisations who escaped from surface cataclysms by entering the cavern system.

7. There is a legend that the gypsies are descendants from inner-worlders.

8. The government denies the existence of the hollow Earth in order to avoid a panic.

9. Certain UFOs come from the inner world.

10. Photographs of the polar regions do not show holes, only shadows and patches.

Rampa made an enigmatic comment about the Northwest Territories of Canada, which may have been a clue for hollow Earth seekers. "Many areas in the Northern [sic] Territories have not been explored. Some areas have never even been seen by humans. How do you know what holes there are in the Northern Territories when no one has been there? It is stupid to say these things are impossible until you know all the facts, until you are an expert in photography, geology." (p. 28)

He made even more mysterious allusions in Feeding the Flame, hinting that he was censored by his publisher. "I wish I could tell you some of the things I absolutely, definitely know, but there are certain things which cannot be told at present. I know the actual truth about the submarines Thresher and Scorpion, and I know what happened to them and why. The story, if it could be told, would make cold chills run up and down your spine, but the time is not yet. There are many things which could be told, but, well, these books circulate everywhere...and there are many people who should not be aware that certain people know what is really going on... The mystery of the Thresher and Scorpion is a stranger thing than you would ever believe." (p. 148)

This comment is referring to the two US nuclear submarines which disappeared and were destroyed under strange circumstances in the 1960s. Unfortunately Rampa never mentioned them again, leaving us to wonder about the great mystery as debris from the subs was allegedly discovered by the US Navy and pictures of the imploded Thresher were featured in a National Geographic article.

In Twilight, Rampa concluded his discussion of the hollow Earth theory. "I have said all I am going to say about it. Oh yes, I know a lot more, a great deal more than I have written, but just trot along to a really good bookstore and buy some books on the hollow Earth." (p. 32) ∞

About the Author:

Karen Mutton (née Carfoot) graduated from the University of Sydney in 1981 with a BA and DipEd. She majored in English and ancient history, with a minor in physical anthropology (prehistory). She has travelled the world extensively and visited some of the most important archaeological sites on the planet such as Petra, Machu Picchu, Pagan (Burma), Copan and the Goreme Valley of Turkey. Karen has a passion for ancient history, alternative medicine, geology and Earth changes as well as astronomy.

Karen's interest in Lobsang Rampa goes back to her early teens when she read all his books, and she also corresponded with him briefly in 1972. She wrote her e-book T. Lobsang Rampa: New Age Trailblazer to counter all the negative information circulating about Rampa on the Internet and to reveal his influence on the New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Karen believes Rampa was scorned because he revealed esoteric information which had been safeguarded by arcane schools of the West and East for centuries. She also thinks his books should be re-examined in the light of 21st-century knowledge.

The e-book T. Lobsang Rampa: New Age Trailblazer is available for purchase via Karen Mutton's website,